I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a new friend, a boyfriend or girlfriend perhaps, or a Canadian, to their first football match. And carried away by the noise and the smell of fried onions, and wanting to fit in and not appear totally ignorant, they’ve shouted just as the noise level lulls, something like: “Shouldn’t it be a penalty if he hits it with his head?” or “We want the ones in the red to win, don’t we?”
And you squirm in embarrassment as pretty much everyone in rows M, N and O, seats 37 to 53, looks at you in sympathy, with disdain or simply laughs out loud.
Well, the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is that friend – but worse.
She presided over the party to announce the new deal that meant her government would fund television coverage of football for the next ten years. It would pay millions of tax-payers’ pesos so that ordinary people could watch their game, the people’s game, in the comfort of their own homes, for free. No Pay Per View, no digibox, no cable, just a tele.
Diego Maradona presented her with a national team shirt with her name printed on the back.
With eight-hundred guests gathered in a tent at the national training ground, the president had a dig at the private company that covered football for the past eighteen years and had just had their contract snatched from them – TyC.
“You kidnapped our goals the way you kidnap the pictures and the words,” said Mrs Kirchner. She paused while there was some slightly awkward shuffling of bottoms on seats.
“Like they kidnapped thirty thousand Argentines!!!” she bellowed. The crowd fell silent. Everyone, from rows A to Z, right across the country looked aghast.
During the military dictatorship that ran Argentina between 1976 and 1983 an estimated thirty-thousand people were taken by the police and military from their beds or off the street and thrown into clandestine prisons.
They were tortured and killed. Some were dumped, drugged but still alive, from planes into the River Plate in Buenos Aires. Pregnant women were kept alive just long enough to give birth then their babies were stolen from them and given for adoption to childless couples loyal to the regime.
It was the Argentine equivalent of the Holocaust. And the president used it to compare the advantages of free football funded by her government against football we’d had to pay a cable company for.
Her friends and supporters suddenly found shoelaces that need re-tying or rushed to the Porta-loos with pressing bladder needs.
After the silence, when the wind had blown the brushwood across all the deserted main streets in Argentina and the bar-room swing doors had stopped creaking, the waves of criticism began.
Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, said: “What she said was a barbarity. It was an offence against ethics, against the values of the people. She should talk less and do more.”
Human rights campaigner and former prisoner under the military, Adriana Calvo, called the statement grotesque. And those were just some of the politer criticisms.
Most of the nation is grateful to be given free footy. Who wouldn’t be? Short of a five-hour working week and 5p a pint beer, I can think of no easier, sure-fire vote winner.
Yet with her crass and insensitive comment, President Kirchner has revealed herself for what she is: a Johnny-come-lately football fan who’s jumped on a bandwagon to win votes and impress her friends.
This was even worse than Tony Blair taking off his jacket to pretend he could kick a ball. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is deeply unpopular and her opponents will find any and many reasons to criticise her – from her extensive wardrobe to her foreign shopping trips and the time she takes to do her make-up each morning.
She has committed two of the worst crimes it is possible to commit in Argentine politics. In many eyes she’s cheapened the memory of the victims of the dictatorship – still a very raw nerve here.
And she’s tried to convince real football fans that she’s one of them, something that won’t wash in this football-mad and football-knowledgeable country.
I suspect this one comment will haunt her to the end of her political career as her popularity plummets faster than sales of Carlos Tevez Manchester United shirts.